


punisher

by migratory_animal



Series: a different love [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Trauma, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Male-Female Friendship, POV Second Person, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, have i told you i'll die for them yet, i wholeheartedly believe root is in love with him, root and harold are unmatched, why don't you have a brief root/john moment and maybe you'll calm down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 21:35:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30011292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/migratory_animal/pseuds/migratory_animal
Summary: Then you said to Harold that the difference between his Machine and Samaritan was him. You weren’t sure, you aren’t sure still if he heard between the lines what you had meant to explain beside the obvious point. The difference between these Gods, of course, but also—the difference between Martine and you.[a work that mirrors and compliments “turning out”]
Series: a different love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2207706
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5





	punisher

**Author's Note:**

> the title alludes to Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers.

_I’ve always been in love with you.  
Could you tell it from the moment that I met you?  
  
The End of Love by Florence + the Machine  
_  
 _***_  
  
John remembers.  
  
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't make a fuss or make you uncomfortable. For all that intimidating interior, he is a gentle man at heart. You see it in the way he plays around with Bear, the way he stitches up Sameen's wounds, the way he brings Harold green tea in the rare occasions he can allow.  
  
And right on the day that precedes your annual death, somehow, despite urgent affairs at the precinct, he finds the time to drop by the hideout and hand you Chinese food from a food chain that you regard well. Still warm. In the same package you find black nail polish and a note, the handwriting smooth and exemplary, all like John:  
  
 _“we walk in the dark.”_  
  
You know the way the quote ends, the crux of it. More than anything else you’ve ever wanted, you want John to be right.  
  
 _***_  
  
You wake up in tears and choking on a scream, a cruel obstruction to your airways and adequacy. Harold is sound asleep, and you’re absolutely adamant about keeping it that way. Wrapping your liquid, as if formless body in a blanket covered in sweat from your nightmare, you leave your room. It’s not really a room, it’s a mockup of a room, the best you could make do with the subway’s limited resources. But it’s yours, issued by Harold as he wouldn’t let go of the importance a real personal space holds. _Personal._ It must be in direct connection with the increasing number of your cover identities.  
  
It’s exceedingly sweet of him. He subverts your expectations and redacts your definition of decency time and time again. How could such an individual exist? How could—  
  
You bump into Bear. He supports himself on his hind legs and props the front ones just below your thighs. He whines. It’s not just a whine, he whines _to_ you. _With you?_ You’re irrationally touched. You’re moved, even, and you’re not about to pretend this scene and your reaction to it aren’t indicative of exactly what kind of day lies ahead.  
  
You rest your hand on his forehead, steady and warm, not caring that his weight is crushing you and his claws scratching the blanket. “Well, you. That face you’re making just won’t do. Come on.” He barks weakly, disturbingly aware that his main human is in much needed repose.  
  
You’re _definitely_ the indulging, enabling parent. Giving him sweets and whatever the hell else he wants because he’s the first and the last thing today that has made you smile and mean it. Shaw will have your head. You’ll let her try.  
  
You’re reclined on the floor, cross-legged and beside Bear, who feeds on the product of your gratitude and sentimentality. Hannah had a dog, isn’t that right? You squint at nothing. Yes, she did! You lovingly press your palms against his heated fur. He breathes loudly, ceasing his feast, looks up at you. You shake your head and nod and the bowl, “Don’t mind me. Attaboy.”  
  
She did.  
  
There was a nasty kid in your class, a textbook bully with a mess in his head that hadn’t been properly managed. You had no patience for his kind, especially not when its actions immediately impacted Hannah. He was bored and bothered by a comeback Hannah threw at him after a dimwitted insult. He decided to play dirty one day. They collided on the street once, probably on actual accident, when Hannah was walking her dog. The boy reached for a rock on the ground and flung it at the poor thing. As shock seized her, Hannah screamed, according to her own account of the incident. He found another rock. And another. The dog lived and recovered fairly quickly.  
  
The boy, after you were done with him, was very lucky to have one remaining eye.  
  
Bear falls asleep in his usual cozy spot. He is a good role model, so you—frightened out of your mind at what awaits you in the land of dreams— follow his example and drift to sleep, too.  
  
 _***_  
  
You were right to be frightened.  
  
This was worse than any punishment of the Old Testament.  
  
You do wonder what she would look like if she had lived. She’d be the most beautiful woman in any room. She’d be bright and striking, well-read and, chances are, a writer. A phenomenon to behold, an event during which to be present and acutely alert. She’d require one’s sole attention by merely existing; and it would undoubtedly be given to her in full. Mostly by you. Always by you, eagerly so. She would be many things that you are not, she would patiently teach you to be human, be a person. Flexible and forgiving, pleasant. She’d be this, she’d be that, she’d be everything, the matter in the core of the Earth, she would—  
  
She’s been decomposing six feet under for twenty three years. Exactly the first twenty one of those she rotted under the floorboards of the man who desecrated her in the most sickening ways.  
  
You developed an identity crisis when you met Cyrus, yes, because he embodied every single thing about your past and your psyche you’d learned to avoid. You were ill-ridden and in shambles, ashamed to be alive when all your victims simply were not. But at the very least you never touched a child. You wouldn’t know how to go on after such an occurrence. And you wouldn’t go on, you’d have the decency to spare the world your pitiful existence.  
  
 _Fucking Trent_ didn’t, so you helped him. It was nice of you. The purest act of mercy you’d ever performed.  
  
Harold is in his usual position at the desk with a cup of tea he no doubt has fixed himself to wake up faster. His posture is that of a well-rested man, but you’re not easily fooled. Your best guess is chronic fatigue, though it hardly can be called _a guess._ It’s on the surface, and it’s disheartening. You sneak up on him, and he, startled, makes that little gesture of almost shrugging, but not quite there since his back limits abrupt movement. He looks up at you, and his whole face softens.  
  
“Good morning, Miss Groves.” You hear the kindness in his voice, so mild yet undeniable.  
  
It reminds you so relentlessly of the exact moment he made you feel complete. You’d finished your cat-and-mouse shenanigan with Martine relatively unharmed (a fractured wrist is kids’ play at this point) and came back to Harold. There he was, sat on a bench, idle and… depressed. You assumed something had happened in your absence, prepared for the worst and made your presence known to him. He looked up at you, much like he has just now, and there it was, that expression in his eyes that you knew would haunt you forever. It was as though you were the only one who’d ever mattered to him. As though nobody else existed beside the two of you and that sweet moment of reunion.  
  
 _“hello there.”_  
  
He smiled at you. He wanted you there with him. He wanted _you._ You didn’t remember the last time you’d been wanted by anybody. The feeling of being needed by not just anybody but by _Him_ filled you to the brim. Then you said to Harold that the difference between his Machine and Samaritan was him. You weren’t sure, you aren’t sure still if he heard between the lines what you had meant to explain beside the obvious point. The difference between these Gods, of course, but also—the difference between Martine and you.  
  
This abnormally quiet morning is a less intense, stiller version of that scene; the scene which determined your essence. You are a part of one whole. You see that now. Get this: he sees that, too.  
  
He’s still looking at you, waiting for you, with a patience that conquers your heart time and time again. You start and place your hands on one of the hardcover books on the desk.  
  
“Yes, Harry. Good morning.”  
  


 _***_  
  
Zero fucking things that are good about this morning. Or about this day.  
  
You’re glad Harold is absent. He wouldn’t like seeing you right now (would he?). What kind of a person would gladly realize that the part of their same whole, their other half is… this? _(would he?)_  
  
The excerpt about cheese, the very first one, is as far as you manage to reach while your entire body remains in a state of thick tension. Like a bed spring that hasn’t got enough room to straighten out. You laugh at Charlie’s innocence, his cluelessness and his uncompromised purity. You laugh because these qualities remind you of the reason you discovered this book all these years ago. Your vision is hot and red and blurry. You toss the book on the nightstand, it almost falls down, you _almost_ let it. This volume right here means to you what Bible does to some. It gets hurt, you get hurt. That’s your reality.  
  
You’re already hurt enough.  
  
On second thought, is there such a thing as suffering enough for people like you?  
  
The thrum in your head is _pissing you off._ You’ll harm something, probably yourself, if it doesn’t stop. Wait, that’s not true. Your body isn’t yours, it’s Hers. You’re left with bleak fantasies of self-inflicted misery. (All your misery is self-inflicted, but the instances where you intend for it are too few.)  
  
You exit the room. You pace around the open space of the subway, get inside the train and stare at Harry’s monitors until your eyes are aching and oversensitive. Bear nudges at the back of your knee, so tender and caring as if he’s aware of how painfully visceral the human condition can be. And then it’s tears and tears and tears until you get sick of it. Bear isn’t letting you go. Still beside you, stubborn and fuzzy.  
  
You pathetically attempt to compose yourself and come back for the book.  
  
You _desire_ to disappear. “Oh, Harry…”  
  
You make a show of pretense at first, then you notice he’s squeezing the book as if it has brought ill will upon somebody. You can’t fight it, not when it’s Harold, not when his eyes are full of calm, calculated madness. It occurs to you that you’ve seen this look on him before, but it’s a lie. Shaw’s mentioned it, described it to you the best she could.  
  
He wore it when Grace was in danger, hunted by Decima.  
  
“Let’s go, Miss Groves.”  
  
His voice is the lone reason you haven’t floated far away. His voice is your anchor and your tether. “Where to?”  
  
“Somewhere peaceful.”  
  
Yes, you could use that.  
  
 _***_  
  
Bear is an intelligent, sensitive dog. You've already noticed his loss of appetite and fluctuating apathy. Bear is precious to Sameen; Bear is good for her. You're not good for him, not today when your suicidal tendencies interchange any sensible ideas. You want to die, and it's expected for such a sweetheart like him to take it to heart. You don't need that. You need him happy and healthy—for Shaw’s sake.  
  
You take him to Sameen's. She's all for it, of course. You doubt she'll return him willingly when you decide your sanity isn’t hanging by a thread anymore.  
  
Harold’s waiting for you outside, as you knew he would be. The apartment is two floors up, meaning there are two flights of stairs to be conquered. He’s worse today than you’ve seen him in a while, the little respite is a must.  
  
John answers the door. Are they having _a sleepover?_  
  
He stays silent, only finds your eyes with his. He's a human shield, subpar meat recruited by the CIA, so it figures that he taught himself to stare at things blankly. And that is why the difference is this apparent, that is why your recognition of what he’s trying to communicate is this immediate.  
  
His gaze glows with a softness that is out of this world, and he offers you a small, crooked smile. He intends to say something or even shout. Something unnecessary. Something crucial.  
  
You almost charge at him for an embrace. You've never hugged a bear—only the Bear—but you reckon John would be the closest to that out of anybody you've known. You never truly thanked him; that phone call was a sick joke. You tried to kill yourself by mixing antidepressants and whiskey just moments after hanging up. The poor cleaning lady at whichever hotel found and revived you. You killed her to express your gratitude.  
  
You never truly thanked him. You must. You will one day. He found Hannah, your little shooting star, your little best friend, the center of your childhood self’s universe. The first person that taught you what love meant. She was forced to join Peter Pan, and Peter hid her body with the help of Captain Hook. Then John appeared, one of the lost boys who knew Peter's poison by heart, and nearly burned down your hometown in looking for Hannah because he thought she was you. He wasn't wrong. He found her and, in a very miserable fucking way, returned her to you. He walked her home.  
  
He did that after you’d tried to hurt his dearest person, his most valuable partner. You see the way he looks at Harold, and because you see that, you cannot understand how you're still alive. He should have ended you and dismembered you when he first had the opportunity. He didn't.  
  
He didn't. He saw Hannah’s body excavated. He caught the sight of her decades old body covered in mud. He weeps for you in his heart.  
  
You smile slyly at him. “Are you and Shaw having a party, John?”  
  
“In Shaw’s very limited definition, yes.”  
  
“Hey!” You both hear and share a warm, laughing look. “Not cool, what you just did.”  
  
Shaw shows up behind John and makes way for herself. “Where’s my little guy?”  
  
“Right here,” you chime as he lunges at Sameen and tangles up in her legs.

In a matter of minutes, you’re standing in her pristine kitchen while John busies himself in the living room. Cleaning his arsenal, Shaw explains, mocks him in good fun. You had no idea just how right you were about choosing the nickname for their duet. Who knew they actually were twins?  
  
You watch as Bear eats from her hands. She doesn’t question why you linger in her apartment for longer than necessary. She _lets_ you linger. You’ll have to depart shortly, but you cherish the fact.  
  
Shaw opens her half-empty fridge and grabs a bottle of milk, maybe for cereal, and in that grey, neutral, emotionless tone says, “I could kill 'em for you.” Like she’s offering you an apple for a quick snack.  
  
You look at Shaw. Shaw looks back. Did John tell her or did she sniff out your weakness? You doubt she calls it weakness. She would have called it that when you first met; she doesn't dare now.  
  
Out of Team Machine, she's the one you’re the most uneasy around. Not because you don't trust Shaw; because in your mind resides a stereotype of avoidant behavior and because you're insecure and broken. Nobody argues whether she's been broken. But has she felt that brokenness? Perhaps not until recently.  
  
“Kill who?” You almost say “sweetie,” but you know her limits—and yours. You don't as yet fancy throwing up on her kitchen floor. (you'll save that for your first date.)  
  
“Anybody that's left.” She shrugs. She always looks angry, but right now she wonderfully isn't. There is compassion in her, real compassion. It's not fake because she _cannot_ fake these emotions. If she tried, they would be a caricature. This isn't. This is priceless. “The cops that let it slide, maybe a neighbor you think knew and didn’t say shit. Point at them—and I'm there to do my part.”  
  
For an insane instant you struggle with pointing at yourself.  
  
You're back to normal in no time, like flipping a switch, and it's thanks to many years of not properly dealing with trauma that you can seamlessly slip in and out of tantrums.  
  
Normally, you would say something objectionable, something that would get right under Shaw’s skin. A one-liner. An atrocious pickup line, one of many used by men who are clueless about women. You would flash a flirtatious grin, exactly contradicting her direct wishes. Today you smile at her to reassure that you’re not about to jump off of a building.  
  
“No, Shaw.” Your voice is soft and small. “Thank you. There is no need.”  
  
She nods, still prepared to hear a rushed “yes,” throw on her jacket, get into the car and drive away to Bishop, Texas. It’s not that you’re apprehensive of her proposition; on the contrary, it is a well-placed one. But she’s too changed a woman to participate in something like that ever again, and you’d rather drag your body over broken glass than jeopardize her goodness. Really, everybody on the team is slightly different on a molecular level than they were starting out.  
  
Even you.  
  
 _***_  
  
You tell him everything.  
  
It might be the fact that this place smells and feels like Shaw, it might be Harold’s humorous comment about the steak, it might be the way he perceives you with sincere sympathy in his eyes—and it might be whatever the hell else. But you tell him every single detail, every single account you’ve long buried deep within your being.  
  
You tell him of the two nightmares. You confess which one is worse, you confess you want every child on this planet dead, and you admit to your annual regression in age. All the while crying and stammering and quivering as if the diner has no central heating system.  
  
Oh, how he _listens_ to you! How he looks at you when he listens! Not through you, not to the left of you or behind you. At you. To him, there’s nobody else in the universe. This truth overwhelms you. You cannot tolerate it because it has been the thing you longed for all along: for him to look to you and live off of your every word. It’s not a mad request, it’s a natural desire to know that the ground is equal. You hope he senses this, senses that he’s been your livelihood since before you met him.  
  
He offers physical comfort, something you have feral hunger for. You thank him silently. You do it every second of your life. Your very existence is a tribute to him.  
  
You've _fallen_ for Harold.  
  
Not romantically, of course not. You've been conscious all your life of your appreciation of women. Romantically and sexually, they're the only ones that interest you.  
  
Beyond that, any human has a chance if they're worthwhile.  
  
And isn't Harry so goddamn _worthwhile?_  
  
He's a genius. He's your beacon.  
  
He knows, because it's obvious, that the Machine is your God. But does he realize he is your God even more so than Her? It is easy to love Her for what She is outside of his identity, but sometimes compartmentalizing the two is missing the point. He created Her, he wrote the code that is Her eyes and ears and mind. He wrote a song, a serenade, a poem. He wrote his magnum opus, and he paid for it dearly. You’re aware of the price. You don’t understand it, you never will. But you’re aware.  
  
Your only fault is miscommunication derived from your blinding faith in the Machine. When Harold says something unjust, you take offense as Her only confidant and Messiah. You shouldn’t. It’s not about Her or you; it’s about him. In many ways, the Machine _is_ him. That’s part of why you believe in Her, that’s part of why you’ll jump off of a skyscraper on Her command, no questions asked.  
  
You try to be mindful of why Harold heavily disagrees about the nature of Her intelligence. This hatred and this skepticism didn't just emerge out of the blue one day. And if you ever arrogantly thought otherwise, the fateful conversation in the hotel room rectified it immediately. You'd been grounded and reprimanded. Like that one time your math teacher lectured you because you found a loophole in his instructions for the task of the day. He accused you of cheating. The child inside of you, though half-dead, still rolls her eyes at him and gives him the middle finger while he's not looking. You didn't cheat, you _bent_ the rules. This little detail, wrongly insignificant to some, makes all the difference. You are who you are because of it.  
  
But mostly because of Harold.  
  
You've called yourself Root since _that fucking_ day at the library. You played a ridiculously easy computer game and put that nickname into the system. You continued calling yourself that because you stopped being _Sam_ the moment Hannah was taken from you. The moment Trent fucking Russell opened the car door for her; the moment you were put upon by that librarian who was so inconsequential and beneath that you didn't bother killing the bitch.  
  
Sam died, you lived. You didn't know what that made you. After a few weeks spent in agony and a puddle of your own blood because you cut yourself to pieces until you felt nothing or something normal, you decided you were no one. A citizen of no country, a patriot of no nation, a child of no parent, a face with no name.  
  
Root wasn't a name. Or, rather, it wasn't your name. You stole it because to have no sound assigned to your meaningless self would have been a detriment. You would have taken your life then. Root saved you. And then she condemned you.  
  
You weren't her, but she was you. It wasn't fair. You'd long accepted that this was your life or, as you preferred to call it, your prolonged death. And then you met _him._  
  
You met him, and he changed you in ways so frighteningly profound and gentle. Like parental guidance, but it's a mere guess. You knew no such thing in your childhood.  
  
Harold made you who you are. Harold built you. Harold sculptured you, and in doing so, he let you pick the form of your nose, the size of your eyes and the wideness of your smile. Whether you had scars or freckles or dimples or birthmarks. He let you _choose._  
  
You began breathing only after you met him. You began thinking only then, too. You'd never thought before, not quite like _that,_ which means that you hadn’t _been._  
  
Root became you exactly twenty three years ago today. You became Root when you first laid eyes upon Harold's elegant, beautiful, ethereal code. You became you because he aided you. When you admitted you could use a hand, he smiled and said that he had two of his own, even though you had previously tried to cut off one of them.  
  
Root was born twenty three years ago. You were born two years ago because you’d found God—and you’d found faith.  
  
“But,” you say to him, “had it not happened the way it did, I wouldn't have met you.”  
  
Harold’s face blooms with horror. You laugh and you cry. He tries to refuse your admission; you don’t let him because there will never be another chance to exhibit such bravery. You’re not cut out to repeat it. You’re made for many things, including a life in servitude to the Machine, but not for this.  
  
He embraces you and his identity in relation to yours. A shadow passes across his eyes. “Then we’d have met regardless.”  
  
He’s _saved_ by this fact—something you thought would forever remain a naive dream. This entire scenery has a dream-like quality. You’re floating on a cloud, a coat of white fog around you, covering you like Harold’s delicate, protective hands. This is warm in the way it used to be when your mother was both alive and moderately healthy. You wouldn’t have guessed that any positive image of childhood could come to you, aged thirty five. It’s possible now. He has made it possible.  
  
“Well, Miss Groves… things grow.”  
  
They do, indeed. He’s finally caught up to you.  
  
 _***_  
  
Bear is a fluffy, furry, four-legged miracle. You begin to concede with Shaw’s behavior around him. He’s found your weakest point and grown on you there. Like a weed. You don’t mind at all. Affection for him is one of the things you now share with Harold, one of the sweetest things. You disagree on many accounts, but this one unites you despite its triviality. You’re on each other’s side, undeniably so.  
  
You breathe the air of April, 15. It’s infinitely easier than last time. It’s infinitely easier than last week. An ever-growing stone has been removed from your lungs. You’re free. Instead of being tethered to this dimension by grief and anger and preteen cadavers, you’re tethered by duty and responsibility. By the people whose lives you’ve touched.  
  
“I am _so_ calling you that!”  
  
 _“Pleasedonot.”_  
  
You won’t. Or will you?  
  
You snicker, Bear supports you. _(even you, Brutus,_ says the mini-Harold in your head.)  
  
You match Harold’s pained pace. He doesn’t need to say thank you, you mentally said “you’re welcome” seconds before he could give a voice to his appreciation. You walk slowly, you drag on without a word exchanged. You’re strangely, dumbly empty of thought, a lot like during the riveting meeting with Control. It was _crazy fun,_ wasn’t it? The barbiturates mixed with amphetamine, the unorthodox stapedectomy, no involvement of painkillers or anesthesia. Somewhere along the way you reckoned you’d die. You didn’t. What doesn’t kill you makes you deaf in one ear.  
  
What about the last thing that'll be crossing your mind when you die of someone's violent hand? Not if, but when. The righteous section of your consciousness keeps maintaining that there is no other gateway for you. You'll have your pit stops of tranquility here and there, but the conclusion to the story shall remain in accordance with your merits.  
  
It almost came to life already. You were prepared to die protecting Simon and the team. Your team. You said so to Harold, who in turn looked on the verge of tears. And you felt the way he looked.  
  
As you strode down the hallways of the hotel, you could remember only one thing. Not your name, not your date of birth, not your mother's face. But Harold's words to you, words of esteem and awe. An unconventional declaration of an unconventional brand of love.  
  
 _“a brilliant woman, a comrade and... **a friend.”**_  
  
And it is this sentiment that carried your body towards the elevators to check on Simon, this sentiment that gave you a courage the likes of which you'd never seen or borne or dreamed of bearing.  
  
These very words defined you then. You were happy. You are happy because had you died that day, they would be defining you still in your death. You didn't care for Martine's pesky tactics or her arrogant demeanor, you didn't care she had a God on her side. You had your own Gods, one made of artificial fiber, another of flesh and blood.  
  
You were happy and, for the first time in your surprisingly, unexpectedly long life, so goddamn proud in your recklessness. Proud because you taunted after abandoning your weapons, “Kill me if you can.”  
  
Nothing could kill you in that moment. Not in the single way that mattered.  
  
Because Harold’s words had rendered you immortal.  
  
“There is a clear reason why I've stood by you all these years,” you tell him as he drinks up your movements. “When you called me obsessed and out of it and a danger, which, I agree, I was. And it's not just my belief in your Machine or in you. It's one simple, straightforward fact with no sentimentality behind it.”  
  
(well. just a touch of sentimentality.)  
  
He would have listened. He would have believed you, all of them would have when nobody else did. Adults around you at that time heavily implied that you were not right in the head. You had a sick mother, you exhibited mediocrity at school. _Of course_ you strived for attention. _Of course_ you made up tales because you needed somebody to look in your direction. You needed to invite “importance.” Everybody behold, I know something you don’t, I can help you solve a case! Yes, it was that. It wasn’t at all that the love of your then short yet already miserable life had recently been abducted.  
  
He wouldn’t have bought that, he would have seen you for what you were: a broken thing. Unashamedly broken. He would have reached out, just the way he is this very minute.  
  
He absorbs your reasoning with quiet dignity. Harold is Harold, after all. Dignified even in the middle of embracing something painfully, dangerously truthful; gladly swallowing your sorrows laid bare before him. He’s in the middle of an epiphany, too—it’s in the eyes that hold many years of bloody wisdom. You can’t begin to decipher what the subject is and what has triggered it, why here and why now, precisely when you’re beside him.  
  
You’ve got your suspicions and your guesses. You keep them close to your disobedient heart because once they reach the brain, you’re a lost cause. You can’t afford to become that: Bear needs you.  
  
Look, Bear demands that you see a most ridiculous squirrel!

_***_

Harold silently takes to feeding Bear. Wordlessly sweeps him away and leaves you to your mournful devices. You’re too drained to utter a word of gratitude. The dog is no joke, he dragged you along like you weighed no more than a feather. It was funny imagining Sameen in place of you. Imagining her laughing countenance! How foreign, how delightful! You crave it, you always crave the unfeasible. Something you can’t obtain but religiously hunt for. You’ll make her break character one of these days. Or future days. You’re a believer, so you have to believe and make plans, even as silly as this one, to fight the paralyzing uncertainty of what lies ahead. Today you allow this extravagance.  
  
You resume reading Keyes. It’s the only form of self-harm you can practice without becoming an inconvenient, physically constrained interface. You’re no use to Her or to Him if you’re crippled—the degree of your helpfulness is of utmost priority. You’re not much use if you’re fucked in the head either, but when are you not? At least you’ve got the license to express your mental affections until today transitions into tomorrow.  
  
Then again, tomorrow marks the first morning you woke up without Hannah in your life. It never ends. The separation is simply symbolic. Your anniversary doesn’t last one day; it lasts well into one week after the fifteenth. It’s baffling that you’re not an alcoholic. You’ve got your mother to thank for the aversion: every corner in your home smelled like pure alcohol. Sterile, barren. A variation on Bishop’s town hospital.  
  
Bear jumps into your bed. You drop the book on your knees and shudder stupidly. He doesn’t acknowledge and shortly falls asleep. You should teach him a lesson and see him out. You don’t. You’re spineless at this hour. Keyes masterfully wields word. He makes you kinder than Harold already has. He makes you cry of heartbreak more deliriously than Harold has as well.  
  
You wish to come back to the day you kidnapped Harold. The day he destroyed you and diminished you—with good reason, you find now. You deserved every single letter he used to administer poison into your bloodstream. You deserved his dismissal, his rage, his terrified expression that left you clueless about where you lost your footing. You deserved it when he said you were the worst; when he begged you to kill him so he didn’t have to suffer one more second of your appalling company.  
  
That pain, that _deserved_ pain in which you can incorporate logic, reason and the laughable phenomenon of karma—you welcome it with more vigor than you do the ache and the heaviness in your limbs, all residue from your childhood. A childhood wherein you did nothing wrong. Not one misstep, at any rate not so major that it warranted a retribution this cruel.  
  
That’s why Cyrus’ hypothesis hurt so much. How could all of _this_ be part of a plan? How could what you did to him have been part of it?  
  
This must be the reason he stayed sane and you did not. He’d accepted the reality. You had not. A piece of you refuses still.  
  
Maybe sanity isn’t for you; maybe acceptance is not your way. Maybe all will subside with time, but aren’t these twenty years time enough?  
  
You accusingly shove the book under the bed and get up immediately. Bear remains still and snoring. Just in time: Harold calls for you from his improvised command center in the train shell. He asks for your assistance, you readily oblige. You examine the code he wrote for a brand new, effective worm—he’d realized he lacked such while working on the last number. The circumstance itself that he trusts you with proofreading his elegant compositions chips away, if only temporarily, at any mental battles you’ve been fighting so far. He turns everything into cotton candy, a matter ephemeral and sweet.  
  
You catch two mistakes. He must have planted them on purpose: for you to find them and exult in so doing. They are subtle and impossible to spot unless the reader is completely brilliant—he has made sure to simulate a reason for genuine pride. Nothing hides from his eye.  
  
You declare the deed done. He warmly and sincerely thanks you, briefly touches your shoulder.  
  
And then looks into you.  
  
You look right back at him, unrelenting and honest. Exposed and candid. It is conceivable that he takes your openness for granted, or he used to. If he continues doing so now, it’s no matter. You’ll let him. You’ll let him take every scrap of you for granted until your breathing stops.  
  
“You were right,” he says, _“Miss Groves.”_  
  
Were it anybody else, you would feed them their own tongue for calling you that. But falling from his lips, your given name sounds like a prayer.  
  
“Was I?” You summon a playful smirk. “About what this time?”  
  
On any other day, Harold would ignore you or conduct a half-hearted lecture. But something is wrong. Something is different—the same thing, the same trace of unknown origin you’ve named epiphany. The shift in the subway’s atmosphere and temperature reminds you of the first time he’d acknowledged that you were better together, that you were a team. A young team, an imperfect team, simply an odd pair. One of a kind in every sense of the term.  
  
Harold studies you exhaustively, he studies you carefully as if this is the first time he’s become acquainted with the idea of you. Then he repeats them. The words you said to him once upon a time when you were someone fundamentally else.  
  
He confesses, he recognizes, and he agrees. “You _are_ the best friend, the best partner I’ll ever have.”  
  
John wasn't right after all.  
  
You spent a considerable portion of your life in darkness, it's true. At some point you'd conceded you wouldn't have anything else or live in any other way, you had in full form surrendered to the idea of rotting flesh and uncontrollable hunger. You walked in the dark, you walked endlessly and you did so graciously without once tripping or falling.  
  
Until you didn't. Until you tripped and you fell, finding yourself at the feet of Harold Finch. He offered a hand, helped you back up. From there on—this is exactly where John's theory stops being consistent—no such thing as darkness truly existed. No such thing _exists._  
  
Yes, at times you still wish for death. Yes, you're easily tempted to listen to the vices of your soul—the vices that have assured they mean well. And yes, perfect existence, much like darkness, doesn't exist. Much unlike darkness, it never did.  
  
You are the most worrisome ocean in recent history, you have had many unwanted guests devastate your waters. You're turbulent, burned out. And Harold is the brightest lighthouse in the world. Light pours out of him. Blinding and ruthless, it swallows without chewing.  
  
John said nobody had to walk in darkness alone.  
  
You say nobody has to walk in it, full stop. The key is finding the guide who will show you a better condition.  
  
And have you not found just the right fit…  
  
Harold has confessed. To you. He has finally conceded with your truth—or you’ve finally molded yourself into something that makes conceding a possibility.  
  
You cry. Or you don’t, you can’t tell. Either way, displays of emotion don’t bother you as much anymore because you know exactly two things of grave importance.  
  
You are safe.  
  
And, after decades of running around in circles, you have returned home.  
  
  



End file.
